In the many years of their dark existence, Northeast Ohio’s Midnight Syndicate has concocted myriad studio albums full of gothic and moody instrumental music, providing the soundtrack for many a haunted house and attraction.
The duo — Edward Douglas of Chardon and Gavin Goszka of Willoughby — made the first official soundtrack to the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, and they were the driving forces behind the filming of a horror movie, “The Dead Matter,” a few years ago.
Yet they’ve never really rocked out — if that’s even remotely the appropriate phrase for a duo who typically writes and records separately in their respective home studios, using synthesizers and samples to create lush orchestral soundscapes — for their fans, who can be found across the country.
”For many, many years, our fans have been asking us to produce a live show,” says Douglas in a phone interview, “and we’ve been doing this for about 16 years now.”
But, as Douglas points out, the nature of their music wouldn’t allow for the two of them to simply grab a couple of guitars and pop on a stage — not that a simple performance would interest them in the least.
No, they envision a multimedia experience, an onslaught on the senses, incorporating film, special effects and more.
“The show is more than a Midnight Syndicate concert,” Douglas says. “It’s going to be a Halloween music concert that’s going to be as cool to watch as it is to listen to.”
That is, if it happens.
Midnight Syndicate is jumping on the trend of using Kickstarter to fund a creative work. Formed in 2009, the private not-for-profit company has been used to gather pledges, according to its website, totaling about $820 million for nearly 50,000 projects, ranging from tech gadgets to, quite famously, a “Veronica Mars” movie.
The Midnight Syndicate Kickstarter effort — found at bit.ly/midsynkickstart — launched Oct. 7 and runs through Nov. 10. Its goal is $40,000. That’s the projected cost of producing the initial show, which would be held at an undetermined Northeast Ohio venue, likely in Cleveland, in November 2014.
“I think that Kickstarter can be a great resource when it comes to funding and launching a project,” Goszka says in an email, “and we felt that it would be the perfect way to allow our fans to get involved in this right from the beginning in a very tangible way.”
The guys have what sound like loose, conditional agreements in place with the technical folks they would need to bring Midnight Syndicate Live! to life, people they’ve worked with on “The Dark Matter,” a haunted attraction, etc.
“We have made these contacts over the years,” Douglas says. “We’re finally in the position to just do it.”
This approach to funding fits right in with the way Midnight Syndicate always has done things, he says.
“We’re on our own label. We’re our own distributor. We’re very independent.”
In the summer, Midnight Syndicate released its 16th album, “Monsters of Legend,” the press release for which calls it a “tribute to the golden age of horror.” It was inspired, the release states, by classic silent films, the old gems from Universal Studios and the UK’s Hammer Films, as well as other European films from the 1960s and ’70s.
“We want you to feel like you are in one of those great classic horror movies where the Wolfman could be off in the distance and there’s a castle on a cliff where crazy experiments could be going on,” Douglas says.
He says the album, which features compositions titled “Into the Valley of Shadows,” “Inn of the Weeping Sparrow,” “Dark Tower” and “Building of the Monster,” has a decidedly classical influence — reflecting the scores of those movies — but also shows Midnight Syndicate’s always improving its incorporation of sound effects.
“After all these years, we’ve gotten better at our craft, which is writing and composing this music,” Douglas says. “Could we have written some of the music on ‘Monsters of Legend’ (in the early days)? It wouldn’t sound the same. I’d say no.”
(Some of the tracks, however, are greatly reworked versions of much older songs, he says.)
If the live show comes to be, it would feature music from throughout the group’s career, although exactly which songs are among the many details Douglas and Goszka can hammer out later.
There already is interest, Douglas says, for the show to go on the road soon after the Northeast Ohio production.
“Once the first show is produced, we have a plan in place that the show will sustain itself as we add (dates),” he says.
“This is an investment in the future. We’re going to take this and grow this and make it a permanent part of what we do.”
Were the campaign to fail, it sounds like it’s simply back to more music for Midnight Syndicate.
“We’ve been fortunate enough to have had a tremendous amount of support over the years and are very hopeful that our fans will help us realize this important next step in our evolution as a band,” Goszka says. “If the campaign is not able to meet its goal, we’ve already been discussing ideas for the next Midnight Syndicate album release. There are so many themes and story ideas that we haven’t explored yet.
“I think the future holds exciting things no matter which path our journey takes us down.”